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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Today's photo is another shot from St. Matthew's Cathedral, but instead of focusing on the main sanctuary, this is a shot of "Our Lady's Chapel", which is located on the left side of the Cathedral. There are several smaller areas of worship in the building, and I plan on capturing and posting on each of them, but I want to focus on one per trip, rather than taking all of the photos in one massive photo shoot. (I have two reasons for this. The first is the time that it would take to shoot everything would take several hours. The second is repeated trips down there means repeated trips to one of my favorite restaurants, Bread and Chocolate!)

I took two sets of bracketed photos for this shot, the first set focused on capturing the lights on the side and the windows near the ceiling, and the second shot focused on the "rest" of the photo. I used DxO Optics Pro to modify the fisheye look of the shot a bit, as I purposely shot it as wide as possible to include as much scenery as possible. (Once again, the "long" shots are a bit larger than the column width on the blog format, I know. But I figured I would make the photo as large as possible for your viewing pleasure!)

Our Lady's Chapel

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Today's photo is another shot that I took while visiting the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, but it is of something that probably has not been photographed that often. I have thought for quite some time that a photograph from a moving walkway would be interesting, because everything, except the walkway itself, would be slightly blurred (or very blurred, depending on the exposure length) and with some good timing a pretty interesting shot could result.

I first thought of this back in November in the BWI Airport while heading to my gate to catch a flight back to San Antonio. I thought the vantage point could be interesting, but not wanting the give the TSA agents a reason to take me in for additional screening, I decided against busting out my camera and tripod in the airport. I knew that the National Aquarium had escalators, but was surprised to see a moving walkway between floors. I rode about halfway up looking for a cool scene, saw the blue neon light on the left, and then bounded back down to the beginning and waited for what I thought would be a good moment to capture the picture. I had to tweak the settings from my normal photos a bit, this was taken with the ISO of 1000, an aperture of f/4, and the exposure time of 4/10 of a second. I also took the shot handheld, to bring in the possibility of a little "extra" blurring to try to capture the shot that I wanted.

I used post processing to change one key aspect of the photo. I copied the left side of the photo and flipped it to the right side of the shot, so the blue neon light is visible on both sides of the moving walkway. I purposely set the one on the right a touch higher than the one on the left, to give the photo a more natural appearance (in fact, I bet if I didn't reveal that secret, you would have not even noticed it!). I used a variety of programs to help enhance the overall finished product, including Topaz DeNoise (noise reduction) and InFocus (to make the walkway sharper), and of course, Nik Color Efex Pro 4 (a few different effects) and Viveza (to enhance the blue neon lights and also make the walkway color more "natural" and less "yellow".

While visiting the aquarium, for the first time in about 7 1/2 years, was very interesting, my favorite shots (this and the waterfall scene from yesterday) had absolutely nothing at all to do with any of the fish or other sea life on display!

Moving Walkway

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!

Monday, December 26, 2011

Today's photo is one of the shots that I had a good feeling about while shooting the scene, and the good feeling got even better as I was processing the shot. If you have visited the Inner Harbor area in Baltimore, you have probably seen the massive glass facade of the National Aquarium, which is where I took this photo. Well, from a bridge crossing over the waterfall scene near the "Australia" exhibit. The shot was not difficult to take, however, it did involve me placing my camera on the slight edge of danger, as I had to balance the tripod on a small ledge of the bridge so I could get the downward looking shot that I wanted, while taking the bridge itself entirely out of the photo. I had to wait about a minute for a small group of people to cross the bridge so I could take the bracketed shots with no vibrations from crossing the bridge, but other than that, the shot itself was fairly easy to take!

I added some extra features using Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2, but a majority of the merging with this shot happened from combining the +2, 0, and -2 brackets in Photomatix. The difference between the output from that program and the final processing was not as drastic as I thought it was going to be. I am very happy with the results of this shot, as if I did not tell you where I took this shot, the first guess would likely be some exotic location in a jungle or island setting or something like that, not downtown in a large city like Baltimore!

National Aquarium Waterfall

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!

Friday, December 23, 2011

Today's photo is the dome of St. Matthews Cathedral, located in Washington, DC. As many of you know, St. Matthews is what I personally consider to be the most incredible church interior that I have ever photographed, as no photo can truly do the interior justice.

I took this shot with my camera pointing straight up toward the dome, with my fisheye lens, inches away from the spot where John F. Kennedy's casket was placed (and commemorated with a marking on the floor) shortly after he was assassinated. I took a sort of similar shot about a year ago, with the wide angle lens, but that was more of trying to capture everything, rather than focusing on the dome itself. I am quite happy with how this shot came out, and I hope you enjoy it!

St. Matthews Dome

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Today''s photo is one of the first photos that I took after officially moving up here to Maryland. This shot was taken at Downs Park which is part of the Anne Arundel County Park system. It is a beachfront park, well to the Chesapeake Bay, that has the added benefit of allowing you to bring dogs to the park! We went there to primarily get some shots of the pier (which will be upcoming) but noticed that some new objects had washed in, including this hollow tree.

Fortunately my tripod allows the legs to be positioned in pretty much any direction, as I believe I had one leg at about 60 degrees, the other at 145, and the other around 220 or so to wedge it securely inside of the tree to allow the shot. That is why the "opening" at the end is slightly off center, but I think it adds a much more natural and realistic look to the photo.

I will have more time to make posts now that I have finally got everything set up and moved in, including some shots we took yesterday of St. Matthews Cathedral in Washington D.C. as I have never posted (or shot!) before!

Hollow Tree

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!